I'm half-way through and will edit in my impressions once I'm done. Really enjoying it so far barring California English which is reminiscent of everything terrible about the Discovery EP (oddly enough California Pt 2 on the Cousins B-Side stems from everything brilliant about the Discovery EP). If all else fails I could listen to Horchata all day and never get sick of it, definitely the M79 moment of Contra so far.

If I haven't confessed my love for you previously, Dave - then I am now!

Really digging the album, listened to it twice through now and I didn't think California English was so bad but I guess that's just me. I really enjoyed listening to Cousins (I didn't listen to it before) and thought it was an incredibly fun track to move to. Killer opener once again with Horchata and I think this is a great follow up from their debut. Well done!

If I haven't confessed my love for you previously, Dave - then I am now!

Why thankyou Tobes. You're pretty swell yourself.

As for Contra I've got to admit it's not as consistent as their debut and perhaps I was expecting too much from it as a sophomore effort. Having said that, the highlights of this album are right up there VW's best. The opening three tracks and closing four are all excellent examples of the versatility that VW have clearly been flexing between records. From afro-pop-punk (loliwentthere) numbers like Cousins to glitchy synth-loop tracks like Horchata it's clear that far from being another Graceland tribute, VW have blown wide open their pool of influences. Perhaps most demonstrative of this is the downbeat, restrained - and who would have thought it - introspective closing track. I Think Ur A Contra sees Ezra holding back the yelps and instead crooning along while guitars, keys and strings cut in and out of VW's quietest and potentially most gorgeous song to date. Yes it's not as polished an indie-pop gem as their debut was but I don't think that's the point of Contra. At the end of the day I'd much prefer them to make something new, interesting and ultimately very listenable rather than try to create Self-Titled 2 and fail miserably.

One thing a lot of the reviews have picked out that I have to agree 100% with is just how well this album is produced. Every xylophone twinkle, every smattering of synths is precisely picked out in the mix and gives tracks like Holiday and Giving Up The Gun real depth on a second & third listen when at first they might have passed by without proving all that "stand-out".

Oh and Toby if you like Cousins as audio only you're going to love the video.

It has downloaded! will give a pretentious and hipster review, fall asleep half way through wake up listening to self titled proclaiming this shit is the bomb and then bash the new album because they're popular now. *bleep* you pitchfork.

As someone who was only particularly fond of two songs off of their debut album and couldn't care less for the rest of 'em, is Contra still worth checking out? Yeah I know what you're thinking, what a lazy douchebag, he easily go and find out for himself by sampling some of their songs off their MySpace page... but I'm stuck in various classes for another six hours and will forget about it by the time I get back home. :(

BTW, how about some forum-specific awards for 2010? I'm thinking this one could easily bag "Paltriest Opening Post".

BTW, how about some forum-specific awards for 2010? I'm thinking this one could easily bag "Paltriest Opening Post".

Haha I was thinking of editing his post into something more creatively befitting of the band but there's a charming simplicity to Noob Sniper's post that I quite like. Plus cba.

It's definitely not a carbon copy of their debut and at only ~30 mins long I would definitely recommend you give it a proper listen-thru. My personal highlights if you're feeling lazy would be Horchata, Holiday, Cousins, Giving Up The Gun and I Think Ur A Contra.

Out of curiosity what two tracks on their s/t were you particularly fond of?

"Mansard Roof" and "I Stand Corrected". I mean, I don't want to come across as a flagrant Vampire Weekend hater, but those are the only two tracks that manage to actually keep my attention the whole way through. It seems as though everything else on the album is either missing something or just sounds fairly underwhelming... relative to the amount of praise they always receive, at the very least. But at only 30-ish minutes, there can't be any harm in giving the latest album a run-through or two. Hopefully it makes good cramming music.

Interesting, I don't think I've ever come across someone with those two as their only album highlights. If I was to suggest equivalent tracks from Contra in terms of tone/sound it'd probably go something like this:

Well, I don't mean to sound as though those are the only two highlights off the album, period, but you said something in the Forced Listening thread which described perfectly how I feel about most VW songs; that they lack a certain hook or climax to really draw me in. They're not bad... just not the most memorable, you know? Besides those two songs, the rest of them sort of just mush together in my brain creating one big indistinguishable Vampire Weekend blob of music.

And thanks, Dave. I swear if someone asks me to calculate a non-systematic standard deviation of a portfolio ever again in my life I'm gonna go postal.